Main description:

Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves. Each wave different, and each wave stronger.

Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America’s most beloved authors. The Mars he imagines in these masterful chronicles is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor—of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grand master once again enthralls, delights, and challenges us with his vision and heart—starkly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, weakness, folly, and poignant humanity in a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.

Short description/annotation:

Soar above the fossil seas and crystal pillars of a deadworld in the pages of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. A milestoneof American literature, Bradbury’s classic collection of interconnectedvignettes about life on the red planet diverges from the War of the Worlds theme,in which humanity must defend its shores against its neighbors, for in Bradbury’sprismatic vision, humanity is the conqueror, colonizing Mars to escape an Earthdevastated by atomic war and environmental catastrophe. Bradbury’s TheMartian Chronicles is a must-read for any fan of science fiction orfantasy, a crucial precursor to films like Avatar and Alien andbooks like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion,and a haunting prophesy of humanity’s destiny to bring our old dreams andfollies along with us wherever we may venture forth.